James Herbert Madden Senior: A Sausalito Original

By Roger Brindle

Part I

Herb Madden Sr. was a man of many skills and roles and paradoxes. He started as a skilled Boatwright, claiming to have been a foreman on the building of Jack London's "Snark".  He helped run a successful delivery business to Sausalito in the early teens (pre GG Bridge) of the last century. In 1915 he bought land on the Sausalito waterfront and, with his brother, founded what later became Madden and Lewis, one of the largest wooden boat-building firms in Sausalito history.

In the early 1920s he was elected to the City Council and by 1925 was Mayor of the town for the first time. The 20s were the decade of prohibition and Herb Sr. managed in that same year to be both building patrol boats for the Treasury agents who were attempting to enforce prohibition, and indicted for running rum. By the late 1920s he wound up in prison for rum running. He was supervising a large landing of booze in Moss Landing when his party was raided by Treasury agents. Unfortunately, one of the rum-runners fired a shot in the ensuing melee and killed one of the T-men. When the government wanted Herb to turn state's evidence and name the shooter, Herb refused and went to prison for three years. He was pardoned by President Hoover in mid-1932, even before prohibition ended in 1933.

Herb Sr. was Mayor again by 1937 when Sausalito was excited about the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge. He presided over the opening ceremonies and, over the next three years, led the efforts to deal with the implications of increasing auto traffic through Sausalito: improving paving, lighting, adding sidewalks. He also began to advocate for a small boat harbor in Sausalito. One of the implications of the new ability of commuters to take their cars to work over the bridge was the eventual abandonment of the ferry and rail service of the Northwestern Pacific, which had been the largest business in town up until 1941, when both services were abandoned.

The City Council had been unable to organize the effort to build a small boat harbor by 1941. When Herb was offered a prime piece of NWP land along the waterfront by the president of the NWP, he jumped at the chance, raised $50,000 of private capital and began building the first harbor. It took quite a while to build the Sausalito Yacht Harbor, partly because the coming of the war put a lot of pressure on Herb Sr.'s boat building business. The yard was turning out lots of large craft for the US government, New Zealand, etc., its labor force tripling during the war years. But there was also the disturbance of local waters because of the building of Marinship, which turned out 92 capital ships during the war. The dredging for the channel up Richardson's Bay to Marinship and the huge basins needed for turning the large ships after launching meant that a lot of spoils were dumped off Sausalito, creating "Bechtel Island". By 1944 Herb Sr. had hit upon the idea of buying old derelict wooden lumber schooners, scuttling them in a line on the East end of the harbor, burning them to the waterline, then using the spoils from the dredging for Marinship to fill in and around the hulks. The big fire was on the night of Nov. 14, 1944. This process created the finger of land known as Spinnaker Point today, which provided a sorely needed breakwater for the harbor from SW storms and surge from great storms in the Pacific. The harbor was built with a borrowed pile driver from the Anderson Cristofani yard in SF where Herb Sr. had apprenticed, using logs that were left over from the 1939 World's Fair and materials wherever Herb could find them. It took a long time, but today the SYH is 600+ berths, one of the largest harbors in Sausalito.

Herb Madden Sr., boat builder and more.

Photo courtesy of Sausalito Historical Society

Sausalito’s Own: VanBo

By Steefenie Wicks - Sausalito Historical Society

The history of Sausalito is full of very interesting characters who have left their marks on the city. None, however, fit that description better than local street artist VanBo, who leaves his mark just about every place he goes.

 Courtesy of Steefenie Wicks/Sausalito Historical Society

VanBo is a painter – one who uses Sausalito as his canvas, the residents and tourists as his patrons. Some love him, others don’t; yet, he is part of Sausalito and has been for the last 49 years of his life.

VanBo’s real name is Robert Conley Jr., and he was born in North Carolina. He said it was the U.S. Job Corps program that was responsible for him moving to California. It was then he attended dance programs and was introduced to Anna Halprin, known as the “breaker” of post-modern dance. VanBo would become part of her company of dancers and perform with her company for almost 18 years. It was at this time he also became involved in the pornography industry for a number of years, while living in San Francisco.

VanBo came to Sausalito in 1969 and became part of the waterfront scene. He tells stories of living with Michael Woodstock on board the dredge that was located off Dunphy Park. He can tell you stories of Dredgetown, the life on this floating community before the city condemned it.

When I asked if he had stories about people in Sausalito, he told me one about Jack Tracy, the founder of the Sausalito Historical Society. It seems that VanBo had been arrested and was given the option of performing community service. He chose to do the community service with Jack at the historical society and spent his time cleaning bottles and dusting the displays while Jack was working on his book, “Moments in Time.”

“I never knew that bottles could get that dusty, but then the whole place needed to be cleaned all the time,” VanBo said. “There was so much stuff’.”

When asked about knowing or working with other people here in town, he compiled a broad list of residents in Sausalito, both on the hill and on the waterfront.

VanBo also claims to have worked for Michael Rex. “I helped him get the Ice House cleaned out after he first got it,” he said.

He also claims he once worked for Sally Stanford, doing some rather interesting projects for her, personally, as well as working around the restaurant. He says he spent time living with Alan Watts, entertaining tourists at the No Name Bar, “and being invited to parties that no one knows about to see what everyone wants to see.”

After many years of moving from one aspect of his life to the other, VanBo has now taken up painting and become rather well-known. He has a Facebook page, a listing on the Internet and a 45-minute film, “Outsider: The Art of Van Bo.” His work was part of the collection in the Las Vegas Sexual Heritage Museum, which closed last March, and he sells a good number of his paintings to Sausalito residents.

VanBo was also a subject of cartoonist Phil Frank.

“Phil thought that I had a great thing going and liked my philosophy on life, so he had a character in his cartoon strip that was kinda like me,” he said. “That’s the best, being liked because I love this place.

“Sausalito has changed. There used to be a time when you could leave your bike and come back for it. Now, you better lock it up. But now things have gotten so bad that, when you come back, they have taken the bike and the lock.”

VanBo said he feels Sausalito is being fitted to the lives of the new people who have come here to live. He’s starting to see that his time here is slipping by.

I asked him what he would do if he leaves this place. “I’ll go on and paint somewhere else,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “My painting is something I do that no one can take away from me. I’m a black man and I have the right to live my life the way I want and paint on whatever I want.

“Things are moving in different directions now. I’m being pushed and moved about, but through it all I can paint. A piece of board, using my fingers, using a brush, I paint. This will live on like all great works of art. My art.”

I asked him about what he’ll remember most about Sausalito. He looked at me and then off into the distance and said, “Oh, that’s easy. It’s being interviewed.”

The Historian Sausalito City Clerk: Debbie Pagliaro

by Steefenie Wicks
There is one person who can tell you more about the history of Sausalito than any other Marin historian --  Sausalito City Clerk Debbie Pagliaro.
Pagliaro, who has spent more than 50% of her life working in just about every city government department, is one of those rare individuals actually born in Marin and raised in Sausalito.  Her playpen was a cardboard box in the front window of her father’s hardware store on Bridgeway, so she could watch the world go by.  She can tell you about the picnics that families used to have in Vina del Mar Plaza, where Santa would come every year for Christmas.
She attended Central School (now City Hall) from kindergarten to 4th grade. Along the way she, with a group of involved young folks in 1965, took on City Hall with their demands for a Youth Center.  Today that youth Center has grown into the Sausalito Parks and Rec Department.  Once again proving her connection with the City where her grandfather started the family business, her father was born in a house on 4th Street; the family the moved to Rose Ct. where she grew up.
Pagliaro got involved with working for the City of Sausalito right after she graduated from high school when her neighbor asked her to come and work a part time job down at the old City Hall on Bridgeway.
It so happened that the City had started a new parking program, and she was to begin her civic career selling parking permits.   Later she took the position of business license clerk, and from there she moved on to the planning department, building department and the police department.  She continues, “It was not until I worked for the Police department that I felt that I had finally become well rounded.  I ended up becoming secretary to the Chief of Police.  That was one eye opening experience because you really got to see both sides of what can become a problem.  I was there for seven years when it was decided that the City really did need a full time City Clerk and here I am.”
“Did you work with long time City Clerk Janet Tracy?”
“Yes I did, and if anyone had told me then that one day I’d be sitting here in her position, I would have been the first to say they were wrong.  But here I am 30 years later, the City Clerk.  You know, Janet Tracy was a cutting edge City Clerk.   She was part of what I call the sub-group of City Clerks that put together the process of departmental training for what would become the Certified Municipal City Clerk position.  She also turned over to me the City Bible: that being a 5 x7 black 3-ringed notebook with  some of the most valuable information on Sausalito, some of it dating back to 1897, including the names of all of the City Clerks since the beginning of Sausalito.” This is a rightful belonging for a Sausalito City historian.
I asked Pagliaro, what did she think of today’s Sausalito?
“Funny” she said, “but that line about ‘never going home again,’ I think that’s true.”
She feels that the City has changed but all for the good.  She states that Sausalito has always been engaged.  It has always been a City that is circular, so cyclical that if something happened in the 1940’s then it’s bound to surface again some 30 or 40 years later. That’s where the historian comes in.  At some point you need to be able to research an issue to find out how it was handled, then bring that to the table today so that the decision made can be the correct one.  She goes on to say, “There was a law on the books once that said Sausalito residents could not have chickens or ducks on their City property.  This came about because my mother got a duck and the duck had ducklings, which were pretty noisy.  A neighbor complained and the next thing we knew there was a law against it.  Now look around Sausalito today, people love having the ability to have chickens and ducks as pets, no one says they can’t. Where is that law today?”
She continues,” Everyone seems to talk about Sausalito’s small town character; well I don’t see that, I don’t see that at all.  The way I explain it is, I have grown up in Sausalito and I have spent a lot of time in Mill Valley but it was not until I started working for the City of Sausalito that I realized Mill Valley is twice as big, but Sausalito seems bigger.  Sausalito is community orientated but not small town characteristic.”
She smiles, as a thought seems to strike her, she begins:  “I can remember being a child, when you would hear the fire alarm, you’d go get your card to see where the fire was; you see each neighborhood had its  own fire call, so on the card you could tell where the fire was. Also, you had to call the fire department to let them know if you were planning a barbeque so that they didn’t show up to put your fire out! Okay, that then would have been called small town… but not today.”

            

Debbie Pagliaro at work in City Hall.
Photo by Steefenie Wicks

TRACY: Founder of the Sausalito Historical Society

Story by: Steefenie Wicks

The phone rang in the middle of the night, Fire Chief Steve Bogal putting in a call to his friend Jack Tracy, “Jack,” he said “You better get down here. I think that we just found a body.”   Jack got out of bed and was on site in less than 30 minutes.  He paced over to the area behind the movie theater on Pine Street, which now had a fire truck and 2 police cars on guard.   He nodded to the Chief, others walked over, kneeled down, took a look at the body that was now exposed from the wash-off.  He walked back over to the Chief who asked him, “What do you think?”  
“Miwok” Tracy replied, “I always said that there was a burial ground around here.”    As he walked off, one of the police officers turned to the Chief, asked, “ That the coroner?’  The Chief looked over at Tracy, as he climbed back into his car, “No,” he said, “that’s Jack Tracy, he’s the town historian, he started the Sausalito Historical Society .”
The above is taken from an interview I did with Jack Tracy back in 1990.  Tracy started the Sausalito Historical Society in 1975.   How he was able to accomplish this?  “I went to my personal friends asked for a donation of $5.00, they in turn went back, asked their friends and so on.  Before I knew it we had raised enough funds to successfully began the dream.”
The first event the organization put together was for the opening of the new City Hall building on Litho Street, where we sit today.  He was asked if it was possible to do a display that would spotlight the history of the town.  The display was an unbelievable success which opened at 7 in the morning and did not close till 7 pm that night.
Days later the Mayor approached Tracy, asked what he would need to start a Sausalito Historical Society, Tracy replied, “Permanent space!”
The next day Tracy toured the new City Hall building with the Mayor. They decided that the second floor would be the best place for the new organization.  This floor would eventually house a Victorian room, a Library of historic books, maps, paintings, glass bottles from the waters of Sausalito, chairs and tables from the first school, old fire men helmets and WWII goggles, along with the many objects collected from Sausalito families that made personal donations from their heritage.
Tracy wanted the Sausalito Historical Society to be a private organization with no money from the City, free from conflict with the political structure of the town.  He wanted this to be a Historical Society for the residents -- the people who he believed were making the Sausalito history of tomorrow. Tracy found that locals wanted to participate in helping to establish their history.  The fee to join the Historical Society was set at $5.00; Tracy did this because he felt that it made it easier for folks to donate at the end of the year.  These private donations of both money and artifacts helped get the organization established.  
Tracy felt that by preserving Sausalito’s past, you can tell were its life came from;
through the objects and artifacts on display at the Historical Society you can get a picture of what Sausalito’s past was like, maybe even a glimpse into her future.
Over the years the Sausalito Historical Society became a known entity of the City.  The reputation of Jack Tracy as a fundraiser is well noted, as is his ability to be gifted with some of the real treasures that exist in the Historical Society today.  His lasting efforts to establish the Marinship display at the Bay model and his book Sausalito Moments In Time are just two of his marks that he left on the history of the town.
But Tracy would never forgive me if I did not finished the story about the Miwok Indians of Sausalito:
Shortly after the bodies of the Miwok Indians were discovered, Tracy contacted some of the spokespeople from the local Miwok Indian Tribe and asked them to come to Sausalito, to bless the found area and the remains which were re-entombed where they were located.
Tracy tells the story of how a young man and woman of the Miwok Indian tribe came to visit. along with an older woman who was their spirit leader.  When he asked permission to tape the interview, the young woman agreed, but smiled and said, “Some things are meant to be recorded and some things are not.”  After the members of the tribe had left, he sat down to listen to the tape; but to his surprise, there was nothing on it but Tracy saying, “testing, 1, 2, 3…”.
Sausalito has always had a reputation for strong-minded residents, people who take on projects for the town’s good and get them done. Stories like this tell the background of the town, how one person, with the help of his friends, could change the town’s historical path forever.
Because of his deeds the town felt it was proper to honor both Jack and his wife, the longtime City Clerk Janet Tracy, with the naming of a Sausalito street after them:  
Tracy Way



Tracy Way runs between El Portal and Anchor streets behind Vina del Mar Plaza.
Photo by Steefenie Wicks

A Native Son

by Mike Moyle

Sausalito recently lost one of its true native sons with the passing of Konrad Knudsen, known by all as Konnie.  Konnie’s life spanned 87 years of Sausalito’s history and touched the lives of many.

Konnie was born on the Fourth of July in 1927 at his parents’ home in the Waldo community where Marin City stands today.  At that time Waldo was an arc of just over twenty houses on the hillside, curving around the bayside marsh that is today the Gateway Shopping Center.  Two dairies, including one owned by Joe Bettencourt, the grandfather of Konnie’s future wife, Arlene, were located among the homes, and cows far outnumbered people.

Konnie had a lifelong love of the outdoors that stemmed from his boyhood in Waldo’s wide open spaces.  Here is a brief excerpt from his oral history, referred to below, in which he describes what it was like to grow up there:

“We would play in the barns, you know, and stuff today that you'd do, you'd go to jail for. You know. I mean they, they'd, whoever owned the dairy now would run you, run you off. But, it was really fun. You know, in the mornings we'd do that, and then go home to breakfast, and then we'd go play baseball until noon, and then after lunch we would go down to Waldo Point. There was a beach down there, and we'd swim. When we finally got paper routes, we'd swim until the papers came, and then we'd go deliver our papers, and go home and have dinner, and then go out and play "kick the can," or whatever, you know, until about nine o'clock, and then go home and start over again.”

Konnie had several different jobs in his early life, including working on several local dairies, and, for a brief time during World War II, as a pipefitter at the Marinship project.  He served in Germany in the Army during the Korean War and, after returning home, got a job with the Sausalito Post Office and worked there as a mailman until his retirement.

Although it may not have been obvious from his name, Konnie was also part of Sausalito’s large population of residents of Portuguese descent.  While Konnie’s father emigrated from Norway, his mother, May, was a member of a branch of the Bettencourt clan that came here from the Azores in the 1800’s.  Just to confuse things, Konnie’s wife, Arlene, was from an unrelated branch of the same Bettencourt family.  

Although he was known for many things, Konnie may be best remembered by generations of Sausalito’s youth and their parents for his active involvement with the town’s youth baseball program.   Konnie had a lifelong love of the game and was among those who helped to bring the Little League to Sausalito in 1954.  For many years he coached his beloved Salvage Shop Seals as well as other teams, and his baseball-isms, such as “Get your glove and go,” were well known.  Some of the most touching memories of Konnie came from his former players who recalled his unfailing cheerful attitude, encouragement and support.  It did not matter how skilled a kid might be – what Konnie wanted most was simply for someone to try.

When the Little League started in Sausalito, participation was limited to boys living within the city limits, which at that time only extended as far north as Nevada Street.  Konnie was instrumental in allowing children from Marin City, as well as interested girls, to play.

Konnie’s contributions to Sausalito’s baseball program were acknowledged when the baseball field at what today is Willow Creek Academy was dedicated in his name in the mid-90s.

Finally, Konnie was a dedicated family man.  He and Arlene raised seven children, and at the time of his passing they had 17 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.  His legacy lives on in many forms.

The Sausalito Historical Society has in its collection a CD and transcript of an oral history of Konnie done by the Anne T. Kent California Room at the Marin County Free Library, and Konnie is also featured in the IDESST Sausalito Portuguese Hall’s new Sausalito Portuguese Heritage Walking Tour (the tour Guidebook is available on the Hall’s website – www.idesst.org).  Both are well worth exploring.


Konnie Knudsen as young boy in Waldo, as a teenager on horseback and as an adult.

Photos courtesy of Anne T. Kent California Room at the Marin County Free Library, and the Knudsen Family